Brian Calvert

In the past, elections in the West have been fairly predictable. In urban areas and along the West Coast, folks tended to vote blue, for Democrats. In rural areas and in the Rocky Mountain interior, they leaned heavily red, for Republicans, especially in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah. Over the past decade, however, that pattern […]

Earlier this month, Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for U.S. president, gave a speech in Phoenix, in which he detailed his immigration policy. He repeated his frequent pledge to build a wall, the construction of which would start on “day one,” he said. “We will begin working on an impenetrable physical wall on the Southern […]

In the 1970s, the Pacific Northwest was at war over fishing. Tribal fishermen insisted on their right to catch more salmon, inspiring a lawsuit against the state of Washington that 14 tribes eventually joined. In 1974, a white U.S. district court judge decided in their favor, granting them rights to half the salmon catch. George […]

The public lands are arguably the West’s most precious resource. These half-billion acres of forests, red-rock canyons, spectacular peaks and subtly beautiful seas of grassland and sagebrush are deeply important to anyone who cares about our region. To protect and manage these lands, we rely on a host of federal, state and local agencies, and […]

In April, Colorado lawmakers approved a bill to fund emergency cleanups at legacy mine sites. The legislation was in response to the August 2015 wastewater spill from the Gold King Mine above Silverton, in the San Juan Mountains, which sent a 3-million-gallon slug of psychedelic-orange toxic fluid down the Animas and Colorado rivers and into […]

When a band of militants took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon this winter, we at High Country News worked hard to understand not only what was happening day by day, but also why it was happening. What did Ammon Bundy and his supporters actually want? We’re still trying to figure it out. […]

The closest I ever came to understanding genuine terror was in Sri Lanka, in 2007. For five weeks, I’d been reporting on the insurgency of the Tamil Tigers, a separatist group fighting the Buddhist majority government. The insurgency had grown increasingly violent over the years, and bombings around the country had intensified. When my work […]

Americans pride ourselves on our generosity, but at the moment we’re not doing so hot. In the face of one of the greatest refugee crises of our time, in which up to 12 million people have fled horrific civil war, the United States has agreed to accept 10,000 refugees over the next year. A lot […]

“Aridity, more than anything else,” Wallace Stegner once wrote, “gives the Western landscape its character.” Though we sometimes forget it, we can never escape this fact. This issue of High Country News offers us a chance to check in on that essential piece of our nature, one that is shaped, for better or worse, by […]

Coal is still a power in the region, but one day it may be grounded for good.